Like playing Rock’em Sock’em Robots, he flinches when struck, but he no longer feels it. His father’s waffle-soled brogans stomp back and forth, probing under the table, and behind them, his mother’s red espadrilles squeak as she shuffles to and fro, like she’s dancing, until suddenly they take flight, her legs dangling like willows until she wraps them around his father’s waist. Achilles hugs the pole supporting the table. The metal is cold on Achilles’s face, but he stays there, keeping his head away from the floor because he knows it’s dirty. His father pounds the table, the vibrations traveling down the pole and rattling Achilles’s head. Soon the metal is no longer cold against his face. He can’t see his mother’s shoes. His father must have taken off his belt because the buckle catches Achilles on the funny bone and he vomits, like a sissy. Someone yells, “Daddy, please. Daddy, please stop!”
His father’s heavy breathing. His mother on her feet, her voice a knife. “You will leave now.” His father’s last kick, halfhearted. A brogan floats by Achilles’s head like a blind, angry animal. His father’s pronouncement: “I’ll not have that kind of violence in my house. I didn’t adopt a boy so he could attack my son, his brother, with a knife. Be a man, Achilles. Things change. Accept it. Be a man.” The front door creaks open and slams shut. Two steps down the porch, slipping on the gravel. The opposite of the scrape and two stomps that cast the day off when he comes home each evening.
His mother, eyes swollen and bloodshot, sat Indian-style on the floor, something she always forbade Achilles to do because the floor had little germs with big teeth. She held her arms open to him, a gesture of forgiveness that made him cry, and cry he did, knowing, unable to explain, but knowing, that she took his sobs as an admission of guilt.
“I didn’t mean it,” he sniffed.
“I know.” She remained motionless, arms extended, until Achilles released the pole and crawled to her. She hugged him and helped him to his feet, sitting him on her lap. Troy sat in the corner, his hand wrapped in a towel, tears fanning down his face. Had Achilles heard Troy yell Daddy?
Achilles pointed to the small puddle on the floor and his shirt and started weeping again in earnest. He could smell himself. “I made a mess.”
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.”
His arm swathed in one of the white towels Achilles was forbidden to use lest he get them dirty, Troy held his hand like he was in class waiting to be called on. Seeing him fixate on the towel, his mom wiped Achilles’s face with her own shirt. “You can put your hand down now, Troy.”
His mother hobbled from the table to the sink. She slipped out of her squeaky red shoes and kicked them, sending them tumbling loudly across the linoleum and onto the carpeted living room floor. Then, thinking better of it, she retrieved them and tossed them in the trashcan. Every so often, between wiping the table and floor, she’d run her hand down the side of Achilles’s face and tell him it was going to be all right or pull him in for a hug. She eventually led both boys to her bedroom to sleep curled beside her. But Achilles couldn’t rest and slipped from beneath his mother’s arm and out of the bed. He tiptoed to the door, looking back just before he left and catching Troy awake. Troy quickly shut his eyes and snuggled closer to Achilles’s mom. When certain that Troy would continue pretending to sleep, Achilles left.
A third of it broken off, the edges crumbled, the frosting balloons flattened, his name smeared, the cake was in shambles. He pushed the third that was broken off against the rest, wet his finger, and ran it along the fissure where the frosting met. He tried replacing the balloons. All stayed, save one. He tried to reshape the crumbled end, but it kept tumbling back down. Thirteen years later, he will stand before the minaret that remained as the last monument to a bombed-out mosque, remember this moment, and realize that he had always been puzzled that it was so easy to destroy things and so hard to fix them, that even the biggest building could crumble like cake. He will temporarily feel less anxious about the war, about the future, believing that to have plumbed his younger self meant all mysteries would eventually unfold. Neverending darkness was how he’d later describe the feeling he had on his eighth birthday. It was the way he felt watching the night sky from inside a bombed-out building, thinking about how peaceful it would be if the sun never rose.
In his room, Achilles propped two pillows against the wall and spread a blanket across the top. Sleeping in his pillow fort, he felt certain he wouldn’t be disturbed anymore that night.
The next morning, his father placed Achilles and Troy side by side on the corduroy couch, their legs dangling, and sat on the ottoman facing them. “Things are going to be better for both of you.” Troy nodded. Achilles mumbled, “Okay.”
His father leaned forward so his hair fell across his eyes, curled his bottom lip up, and blew, making his white forelocks tickle the air like smoke. “What’s happening?” he asked anxiously. “What’s happening?”
It had been dark the first time his father did that trick, and Achilles had thought he was on fire. Achilles was supposed to say, You’re burning up, Daddy. First he had to share his cake with Troy, now this. He looked down at his feet. Troy was wearing his red Superman socks.
His father tried again, curling his lips and blowing, but this time he poked Achilles in the ribs, and Achilles couldn’t help laughing, even though it hurt a little to do so because his sides were still sore, and when his father chucked his chin and hugged him, his memories of the night before faded, the way landmarks dwindled in the rearview mirror, sometimes receding so swiftly he flinched and wondered if they had ever really been there at all.
“Things are going to be better than they’ve ever been before,” said his father. “Troy, you have the home you deserve. Achilles, you finally have the brother you need.”
They nodded obediently. His mother cruised by, her purposeful gait becoming a limp when she thought herself out of sight. She wore the same look as the night before, a mix of guilt and embarrassment.
His mother said they never had to be alone. His father said brothers had to stick together. Troy wanted to join the Cub Scouts, Achilles joined the Boy Scouts. Troy wanted to play T-ball, Achilles played Little League. Troy wanted to take judo, his mom made Achilles go too (though Achilles eventually switched to karate because it provided more opportunities to kick people). They didn’t stick together; they were stuck. The ice cream and waffles had only been the beginning. That night, his parents did switch bodies, his father chipper, his mother suddenly somber. If their father went anywhere with Troy, even for a quick smoke and fire run — to fill up the tank and buy cigarettes — Achilles’s mom made them wait for Achilles. By the time they were in high school, Achilles was a wind-up doll. Troy wanted to learn guitar. Achilles signed up without being asked. Troy wanted to run cross-country. Achilles went shopping for new shoes. Troy wanted to join the military, go Airborne, jump out of perfectly good airplanes. Next thing Achilles knew, he was dodging bullets and shitting sand and there was Troy, always smiling, always with the sun and the wind to his back. Troy, the one everyone thought older and wiser because he was taller. Troy, always raising Cain. Troy, not, as promised, always warm and friendly, but damned near tireless.